Spud: Please don't make any flint striker that SHORT! It makes them Impossible to hold, and control, and increases dramatically the opportunities to slice your knuckles and fingers with that sharp flint. Make them no less than 4 inches long. I make them longer than that, because I have wide hands. :hatsoff:
I spent a long weekend demonstrating flint and steel fire starting for my gun club, starting hundreds of fires. I learned the deficiencies of poorly thought out strikers designs the hard way.
Remember when visiting museums that have fire strikers as "artifacts", in their collect, that People are a LOT Taller, and Bigger today than they were 200 years ago.
With some of the loop strikers I have seen, I would be lucky to get 2 of my fingers inside the loop, leaving the other two exposed to that flint to cut. Kids, with smaller hands than mine, have little problem holding my larger strikers- no more than their weak wrists cause them problems holding and controlling any size striker.
When I teach kids to start a fire with flint and steel, I have them rest the bottom of the striker on a log or solid surface, with the charred cloth at the base of the striker. Then they make an angled blow with the flint on the face of the striker to cut steel and throw sparks into the cloth.
The last thing you want kids to experience is cuts to their fingers, and hands doing this. That not only makes the kid injured afraid of this activity, but intimidates all the rest of the kids from trying to learn how to do this. :hmm: